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Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2005 17:53:51 +0200
From: Georg Bauhaus <bauhaus@futureapps.de>
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Subject: Re: GNAT GPL 2005: Too clever by half?
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Date: 2005-09-24T17:52:27+02:00
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Marin David Condic wrote:

> They want a disk full of software that just plugs 
> in and they can go to town.

In other words, they fall victim to the illusion of a DWIM
environment.

> They want it on their existing Windows 
> platforms. They want it to install with the ease they are used to for 
> other Windows software.

This is the issue. Impression management. I'm serious, and I think
the failure is not so much a licensing issue. All the more when
licenses are evaluated by comparing the impressions you get, either
from the wording, or from the people that some see associated with the
license. Chad Meiners has told us an example. He dislikes RMS,
and this reflects in part on the GPL.
(I don't know RMS, but I can read the GPL.)

Have you ever tried to do a non-trivial thing with Visual Studio?
If so then you know that Microsoft development is as complicated
as anything, if not more so, given the big complex, backwards
compatible collection of software they support. The learning curve
is not linear.

Yet MS marketing manages to make people believe that it is easy to
write Windows software. They let you make some easy steps in the
beginning. After that you are on your own, but you have already bought
the thing.